The Collected Stories of Colette (73 page)

sang Marcelle.

“She’s got her nerve . . .” thought Brice indignantly. With his left hand he grabbed his upper right arm, and smiled the way patients who flaunt a certain stoic aplomb smile. Marcelle’s tall figure leaned over him.

“Is it very bad? Try to hold out for another thirty or forty minutes. Let’s save the ammunition for tonight. Can you?”

“Can I? Come on, it’s a game for me . . .”

He shut his eyes so that she would not read in them an overwhelming fact which he himself did not as yet believe: for the second time since that morning, the neuritis had just deserted his right shoulder and his arm as far as the elbow. So total was the reprieve becoming, so eager were the muscles to move, and so astonished were they to feel themselves free and light, that he nearly betrayed himself, nearly groaned with ease. “Not to suffer,” thought Brice, “what pleasure can compare with this inner silence, this perfection of one’s whole being? Do I even have a left arm? Where is my left arm, its burning right shoulder, the shooting pains of a probe being helped along with a stylet, replaced from time to time by a heavy roller which crushes half the forearm, leaving the other half bound down, in spasms, pulling on its chains?”

He stretched his leg out gingerly. “Nothing in the leg anymore. My knee is being a dear, like a young boy’s knee, the knee of a runner . . .” Meanwhile, his wife, in the next room, was speaking to him.

“What did you say, Marcelle?” he shouted. “What square are you talking about?”

“St. Julien-le-Pauvre,” she answered from the other bedroom. “What they’ve done with that little corner is just wonderful. I’m also going to go see the Jardins des Gobelins, apparently they’ve kept the old fruit trees. Can you imagine? Open-wind apricot trees in Paris . . .”

He heard her laugh.

“Talk about wind, they’re getting plenty of it today!”

She reappeared in the doorway of his room. Brice had just enough time to draw in his arm, which he had been stretching, bending, stretching with underhanded exhilaration. Marcelle gave her husband a searching look.

“You’re suffering like a poor little baby and hoping I won’t be able to tell.”

“It’s impossible to hide anything from you,” said Brice, taking on the jerky delivery, the smile of the discreet martyr.

She stopped twisting around her finger the ringlets of her hair tangled by the gusting wind, knelt down next to the armchair, put her big, careful arm around Brice’s neck, and leaned over gently, cheek to cheek.

“Poor, poor baby.”

“Marcelle,” Brice said grimly, “you’re wearing your hair too long, I’ve told you so a hundred times.”

“Yes, darling.”

“You should change that idiotic hairdo, those curly wood shavings, and that flat part on the back of your head!”

“Yes, darling.”

“You say, ‘Yes, darling,’ but you’re just making fun of me!”

“Yes, darling.”

He freed his head with an exasperated gesture, and Marcelle stood up.

“Careful now, you silly goose,” she said tenderly. “No acrobatics. What if I put a nice hot towel on your shoulder while you’re waiting for your medicine?”

“Hot and useless . . .”

“So it will mix the pointless with the unpleasant. One more word and you’ll get my Michel Simon imitation.”

She stood in front of him, too tall, long-armed, but well proportioned, and built simply from head to feet. Maturity rested lightly on her, without excess weight, reddening her face a bit, heightening the clear blue of her eyes. Marcelle judged her nose, her mouth, the shape of her chin strictly: “It’s not very finely made, but it’s good and solid.”

For the moment she felt useless and was trying not to show her pity. She pulled the little peplum of her dark green jacket down over her short green-, gray-and-brown-plaid skirt. “It’s the same outfit she’s wearing in the photograph,” thought Brice. “The square buttons, the little Scotch trim on the pockets and collar, everything’s the same . . . Photography really is a fine art!” He was overcome with rage, afraid of losing his composure, and asked to be left alone.

“I’d like to try to sleep a little before dinner, you understand.”

Puzzled, Marcelle did not respond right away.

“I’d be happy if you slept, of course, but . . . what about tonight?”

“Tonight, tonight . . . One sleepless night more or less, for the last eight days . . .”

“Seven days, Georges . . .”

“Seven days, then! They obviously haven’t seemed long to you!”

As he grew more upset, she was quick to give in.

“I’m going, I’m going. Something to drink? Are you comfortable like that? You don’t want me to take away the big cushion?” His only response was a shake of his head, and before she left, he had still to endure the caress of a cool hand on his.

Left alone, he tested his arm and his leg, both feeling as new and impatient as himself. He closed his fist firmly around his bunch of keys to keep them from jingling. He took the page torn from the newspaper, the photograph he had studied twenty times, back out of the drawer, and placed the triple lens over it. Blurred faces came into focus and seemed to rise up toward him.
If you recognize yourself as the person in the circle, please stop by our offices; you will receive the sum of . . 
. In the center of the white circle, the features of a fat lady peered questioningly at the photographer, as she was starting down the stairs to the métro. Above her, two lovers were bidding each other an avid goodbye, with a passionate kiss which bent the woman back over the iron railing; the man could barely be seen, behind a pleated plaid skirt, a dark jacket, and a pointed felt hat. Beneath the hat’s wide brim Brice recognized the straight, somewhat large nose, the overly long ringlets of hair, and the religiously lowered eyelids. “I’ve never seen the shape of her jaw so clearly before. How long has she had that chin? It’s like an animal’s, really. She’s like all women; once out of their usual companion’s sight, they change . . .”

He felt keen, shrewd, filled with hatred. He started to undo, to take off his long, blue, flannel invalid’s robe. “Too soon. She wouldn’t believe the attack subsided so quickly. I’ll take care of this dirty business tomorrow . . .”

At first he used the information provided by the newspaper itself:
Photograph taken in the Xth arrondissement
, and the name of the station, Château-Landon. He was proud of himself for not having asked his wife any questions, but he had her followed. In her presence, he had no trouble grasping his upper right arm with his left hand, as if overcome by a brief, sharp pain, and into his limping around the apartment he put all the casualness of the cripple reconciled to his lameness.

He experienced the strange vigor of the suspicious, their physical immunity, but also a jealous torment which at times made him tremble all over, especially at night, and against which he cowardly asked for help.

“Ask them to fix me a hot-water bottle, Marcelle. Would you hand me the vicuña blanket?”

He found out nothing, neither around the entrance to the métro nor in his wife’s mail, and having called off the too-costly gumshoe after a week, he ventured a vague but direct inquiry: “What would make you really happy, Marcelle?”

She turned her prominent eyes toward him and answered without having to think: “Lots of money, to buy a house in the country with, a complete fishing outfit, and the best bootmaker for sport shoes. And another apartment that wouldn’t be so close to the Seine.”

“She’s stupid,” thought Brice. “Stupid or very clever.”

“And another husband, Marcelle? What would you think of a brand-new husband? New, handsome, robust?”

He laughed, but Marcelle wrinkled up her nose.

“That, my dear, is what I call humor for men only. Little games that go over big in certain government offices. Take my Uncle Auguste, you know what he and his colleagues used to do in the offices for Air Purification? When they weren’t telling stories about their wedding nights, they were staining pieces of paper with ink and folding them in half to make designs, or else they’d play at what-would-you-do-if-you-won-a-million.”

“Customs of a bygone age,” said Brice vexedly.

“Thank God! Ever since women started working in government offices, the men have been behaving a little better!”

In the end, Brice lost his patience. One day he even admitted to himself that his interrogation humiliated himself most of all. Surprised by an unexpected hug from Marcelle—“Do you still like my big monkey’s arms around your neck?”—he was unable to hide his sudden emotion and his wet eyes.

“It’s my nerves. You know, now that the worst is over . . . it’s easing up . . .”

She kissed him, and boisterously celebrated the departure of the fickle pain. But when they were apart, he was once again seized with rage, became overexcited while out walking, rushed home, and did not wait any longer to thrust in front of his wife’s eyes the crumpled page from the newspaper which never left him. He had considered accompanying his action with some accusatory remark, but all he could come up with was: “Can you see anything, here, in the way of a resemblance?”

Sitting down, Marcelle smoothed out the creases in the paper with the palm of her hand.

“Oh, well, yes,” she said slowly. “Well, yes, yes . . .”

Brice suddenly felt very tired and sat down.

“I can see,” Marcelle continued, “that a Scotch plaid is almost always prettier when it’s worn on the bias than when it’s worn straight. I can see that my saleslady is right when she says a design altered to a client’s taste is always less pretty . . . This’ll teach me . . . Compare the square shapes of my plaid to the diamonds on this woman here . . .”

She broke off to laugh. “Say, Georges, by the way, look at these two in the photograph, they’re really putting their hearts into it, did you see? And
coram populo
!”

Speechless, Brice grabbed his upper right arm with his left hand.

“What is it, Georges? Hurting again?”

He tightened his lips, stricken from his shoulder to his elbow, called back to the burning, capricious, throbbing pain. His neuritis kept him awake till morning. Toward dawn, exhausted, he reached the point of surrender and vague prayers, and he begged: “My suspicions, let me have my suspicions back . . . Let me have last week’s misery back, the torture that was easing my pain—a truce, a respite, that’s all, a respite.”

[
Translated by Matthew Ward
]

When the sergeant arrived in Paris on leave, he found his mistress not at home. He was nevertheless greeted with tremulous cries of surprise and joy, embraced and covered with wet kisses. His bitch, Vorace, the sheep dog whom he had left with his young sweetheart, enveloped him like a flame and licked him with a tongue pale with emotion.

Meanwhile, the charwoman was making as much noise as the dog and kept exclaiming: “Of all the bad luck! Madame’s just gone to Marlotte for a couple of days to shut up her house there. Madame’s tenants have just left and she’s going through the inventory of the furniture. Fortunately, it isn’t all that far away! Will Monsieur write out a telegram for Madame? If it goes immediately, Madame will be here tomorrow morning before lunch. Monsieur must sleep here. Shall I turn on the water heater?”

“My good Lucie, I had a bath at home. Soldiers on leave are pretty good at washing!”

He eyed his reflection in the glass; he was both bluish and ruddy, like the granite rocks of Brittany. The Briard sheep dog, standing close to him in a reverent silence, was trembling in every hair. He laughed because she looked so like him, gray and blue and shaggy.

“Vorace!”

She raised her head and looked lovingly at her master, and the sergeant’s heart turned over as he suddenly thought of his mistress, Jeannine, so young and so gay—a little too young and often too gay.

During dinner the dog faithfully observed all the ritual of their former life, catching the pieces of bread he tossed for her and barking at certain words. So ardent was the worship in which she was rooted that the moment of return abolished for her the months of absence.

“I’ve missed you a lot,” he told her in a low voice. “Yes, you too!”

He was smoking now, half lying on the divan. Crouching like a greyhound on a tombstone, the dog was pretending to be asleep, her ears quite still. Only her eyebrows, twitching at the slightest noise, revealed that she was on the alert.

Worn out as he was, the silence gradually lulled the man, until his hand which held the cigarette slid down the cushion, scorching the silk. He roused himself, opened a book, fingered a few new knickknacks and a photograph, which he had not seen before, of Jeannine in a short skirt, with bare arms, in the country.

“An amateur snapshot . . . How charming she looks!”